As minimally invasive surgery is being adopted in a wide range of surgical specialties, there is a growing trend in precision surgery, focussing on early malignancies with minimally invasive intervention and greater consideration on patient recovery and quality of life. This requires the development of sophisticated micro-instruments integrated with imaging, sensing, and robotic assistance for micro-surgical tasks. This facilitates management of increasingly small lesions in more remote locations with complex anatomical surroundings.

The programme grant 'Micro-Robotics for Surgery' seeks to harness different strands of engineering and clinical developments in micro-robotics for precision surgery to establish platform technologies in: 1) multi-scale robotic design and fabrication; 2) micro-manipulation and cooperative control; 3) microscopic imaging and spectroscopic biosensing; 4) intra-operative vision and navigation; and endoluminal platform development. By using endoluminal micro-surgical intervention for gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, lung and breast cancer as the exemplars, we aim to establish a strong technological platform with extensive industrial and wider academic collaboration to support seamless translational research and surgical innovation that are unique internationally.

UKRI EPSRC Press Release

Our Programme Grant Team